


Sing Me to Sleep (Ryden Oneshot)

by CryingKilljoy



Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: BoyxBoy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-02-19
Packaged: 2018-05-21 15:51:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6057301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CryingKilljoy/pseuds/CryingKilljoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For many years, scientists have been working to create a new breed of human that is less destructive, less permanent, one that dies after falling asleep due to issues regulating their breathing, and as an experiment to test how they react, the government places four of these humans, called Borderlines, in Ryan Ross' house and disguised them as juvenile delinquents in search for reformation.<br/>Ryan is oblivious to the chaos ensuing around him, but that's about to change.<br/>~Something I wrote a few months ago, so my writing style has significantly changed~</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sing Me to Sleep (Ryden Oneshot)

"Brendon's about to die. I hope you realize that. Our tests are coming to a close, and that means we'll be reassigned to another case. I'll miss you."

"You do recognize how morbid that sounds, right? We register a death as a cue for a new job, instead of valuing a human life as it should be valued."

"The Borderlines aren't human, though."

"They're close enough. Shouldn't that qualify?"

"Admittedly, not to our supervisors."

"I'll miss you, too, then, I guess. It was a good run."

"Sure was. Now let's be prepared for the inevitability."

~~~~~

"Take the drink!" I demand, shoving a silver bottle into Brendon's shaking hands, but he pushes it back into mine just as swiftly. I'm on the cusp of desperation, soon to be more intimate than borderline. I have to do this. I have to keep him alive, and if that means practically drowning him in pills and caffeine, so be it.

"I don't _want_ a pointless energy drink, Ryan!" Uncertainty hovers in Brendon's voice, converting his calm and collected demeanor to that of a reckless mess. "I've had enough of those." His tone softens slightly as he casts his eyes to his lap.

I do the same, playing with my fingers with the others to familiarize myself with the texture that I've never spent enough time to observe thoroughly. Times like these really push one to take note of the details, because nothing else is going to matter when their friend is gone.

Brendon's eyes flick upward to signal the continuation of our conversation, pushing my chin up with his pointer fingers so that I meet his gaze. "I'll give you one more, okay?" When I don't respond, he digs deeper to find my attention, raising a pointed eyebrow accusingly. "Okay?"

I nod. "One more," I whisper in repetition, as if sealing the deal, sealing his fate. One more is all I need.

Taking back the energy drink from my clutch, Brendon stares disdainfully at the unopened thing before forming his hand to remove the aluminum piece keeping the liquids inside the can. His hands tremble as he brings it to his lips, taking a swig after a few moments of timid apprehension.

I can tell Brendon is in pain, from the way he winces as each drop swirls in his mouth, from the way he shuts his eyes tight to block out the feeling of metal and electricity, from the way he doesn't say a word about it because he knows it's what he has to do. Just so I can have another hour or so with him.

"I'm so, so sorry," I apologize, tears tugging fiercely at my lashes.

"Don't do that," Brendon directs, shutting me down. He waves a hand around his face as if to signify him blocking out my ignorance, though it only contributes to the ambiguity of his deeds and words.

"Do what?"

"Do that thing where you pretend it's your fault." Brendon takes me by the shoulders and forces me to look at him. "Because it's not."

With that, the reign of silence begins. I don't know what to say, and it appears nor does Brendon, but the lack of sound is somewhat pleasant, even in these circumstances.

"I hope you're grateful," Brendon eventually states. "I'm doing this for you."

Oh, I am. I am _incredibly_ grateful. Grateful for him, grateful for the time we shared, grateful for the simple smiles I was given, even if it was supplemented by extreme tiredness and bags under our eyes. Grateful for it all.

"For me?" I clarify. A few days ago, I would've never thought Brendon could do _anything_ for me, let alone sacrifice his comfort for my happiness for a few hours to keep me company and warm my heart. But now....now, there's something different about him, something that I cannot describe directly.

It's not the light that the feng shui candles radiate around the room, amplifying our loneliness by adding to the dull reality of meager companionship. It's not the silence in which we rest, just begging for us to waste our time on its own petty needs. It's not even how the curtains billow from the chill in the air, brought in by the sleepless wind. It's the fact that I will be the last face that Brendon ever sees, and that clearly means something to him.

"Of course," Brendon acknowledges, his voice softening like the leaping of frogs onto lilypads through the crisp summer air. "It's always been for you." And somehow, even if it's something so broad and daring, a topic that he's never explored before, I believe him.

After all, I have to, and not because he's about to die. I believe him because he always made sure I was included, whether it was at the mall or just solely allowing me to sit in the front seat with him in the neighbor's stolen car. I believe him because he senses that I cannot win against him, so he loosens his grip on my arm and convinces me to make him surrender. I believe him because he mentions to me that I should, and that's the only reasoning that I demand.

"Thank you, Brendon." My tone is low, my ego small, my hope diminished.

My friend dips his head, his gaze sinking to the floor. It takes him a while to muster the courage to utter one simple "yeah".

I sigh, grabbing Brendon's hands fiercely and digging my eyes into his. "Do you...do you just want to forget about our fighting? You're about to die, and...I don't want you to leave me while we're still on bad terms, you know?"

"I could never hate you, Ryan," Brendon whispers, brushing the stray hairs out of my face. "You're too important, and even if there is some sort of afterlife, I wouldn't despise you in it, either."

I should have foretold my near future, but I simply couldn't — I begin to cry. Tears, buckets of them, fall down my cheeks, washing away the grime of fretting, and no matter how much I wish they would cease, return to my body to help it in some other way, they don't listen.

They make me feel weak, because Brendon has never witnessed such a sight, especially on not me. This is a fashion — a fashion of pain, a fashion of hollowness, a fashion that I haven't even worn in front of my own best friend — and I hate the way it looks on my body.

Brendon appears panicked, like he's never seen someone break down in front of him, but I don't blame the guy — perfection doesn't falter.

In an act of the only suitable thing that he can do, Brendon wraps his arms around me, pulling me into his chest.

It feels warm, warm like nothing I've ever known, warm like the smell of honey that clings to him, warm like the memories that I will have to keep to remember this boy.

Maybe I should feel ashamed for sobbing into my friend's shirt, primarily because _he_ is about to die, not me, but I don't care — I don't _want_ to care. Instead, I let it all out, my sins, my troubles, my mistakes, all in the form of salt water cascading from my eyes.

Brendon nestles his head into my neck, and his voice escapes as a low whisper. It is the most heartfelt apology I have ever heard, as if declared by the swaying trees and carried by the aching wind — it is a parting, a parting that I never want to experience, a parting that I will hate afterwards, a parting that I must know after all of this, even if I want to bury it. "Ryan, I love you, and it's going to be okay."

And all I do is nod.

~~~~~

"I'm starting to feel sympathetic for the kid, you know? Even we loved the Borderlines, but ever since they were created, they were on the path to immediate death."

"In the beginning, they were manufactured people, formed by us through chemicals and falsifications. We didn't care about them at all, besides a professional curiosity in how things would play out. Now...I'm tearing up."

"It's funny — we shouldn't bother with them beyond science. We're married women. We have kids. You and your wife come over for dinner sometimes. Yet here we are, shedding tears over four boys who aren't even human."

"What have we come to, yeah? I don't know what to do anymore."

"Just don't mess with their brain chips. Perhaps that would be wise to distort them, seeing as this is the most important part of our experiment, but I want to see how this unfolds."

~~~~~

Our moment of peace didn't last as long as I would have hoped.

"Why didn't you tell me about all of this?" I interrogate.

Brendon throws his hands into the air in a defensive manner. "What was there to tell? That I'd be dying before you even got to become familiar with me? That your home would be teeming with dead bodies that you positioned to make them look as if they're just sleeping so that you could act like they're not actually gone? That you might've gotten a friend for the first time in a while, just to have them torn away from you? Is that really what you would've wanted to hear, Ryan?"

I shake my head. Guilt furls and unfurls in my stomach, but I force myself to continue listening, to continue to imbibe the harsh words that fall from Brendon's mouth.

"I recognize that you hate me, Ryan, and that's okay — it really is, and I presume I can savvy why. I don't expect your admiration, just your safety, and that doesn't require me barring you from anything."

The audacity in this one. First, he sashays right into the house and stages a whole show around him. Then, he inadvertently converts my mother to prefer him over me. And lastly, he's still here, siding with himself instead of adapting to either section of the account.

"I don't know what you want, to be honest," Brendon admits, his words trailing off as they break like his fragile personality. "You necessitate things implicitly and insist on them being there, even after you voice your threat that _no one_ can decipher, because it's all made from opacity and vague intentions."

You know what? Screw him. Screw his diamond-cutting jawline. Screw his mellifluous laugh. Screw his quiff that makes him seem more collected than he really is. Screw his ability to make me care and his inability to stick around for the collateral. Screw his Yorkshire accent, which I know isn't adorable at all; it isn't, okay? Screw his leather jacket that locks him inside of an aura of ferocity which no one can penetrate. Screw his odd vocabulary, even words like "summat" and "clarty", which I usually find frustratingly captivating. Screw his all-knowing cursory glances that he sends my way, making me blush uncontrollably. Screw his dark sunglasses that block the rest us from seeing eyes brimming with things that I don't comprehend, things that he'll never tell me. Screw everything about him, even if they're things that I generally revere.

"You should've been stuck with someone else," I admit, the truths coming tumbling out of my lips. I can sense the beginning of something terrifying, the beginning of the largest thunderstorm in the history of humankind, but I don't let myself put a halt to the confessions, however life-threatening to either of us.

I want to throw things. I want to throw _a lot_ of things. All of it.

I want to experience a hailstorm of objects that shatter, that steal breath, that are the prickling sensation sailing over skin.

And most of all, I want Brendon to get out of my house permanently, I want his heart to bleed, and I want his lungs to scream out for me and not achieve their goal. I want him to understand the feeling of possessing perfectly swift fingers and not being able to close them around the things that he needs — only destined to touch stepping stones as he breaks their backs and has no time to apologize. I want him to realize that the curve of his shoulders is also the curve of a trigger, to realize that his mouth is a pistol and that I've been spending too much time standing in front of him, absorbing the blow.

Too often we humans hate without reason, judging the mainstream, condemning the soon-to-be plausible, and very rarely does our mind overheat with candid rage; but this is the one instance of morbid purity.

"Ryan—"

"No, Brendon! You don't get a say in this!"

It seems to shut him up, my elevated tone, but it hurts to know why. Whenever I raise my voice, I see him flinch, and I recognise that it's not a sensory overload; that sounds different. It somehow makes his stomach uneasy to see me in such a state where I am required to express acerbity in such a way.

"Ryan..." Brendon's soothing voice usually calms me down, for I continuously desire to hear it, allowing him to speak his mind and assist, but this time, it does nothing for me, only fuel my mistrust.

"You came here to be taught a few lessons about how to behave yourself, and I've done more than I was expected to."

Brendon is attentive, clinging onto every word because he fears that it will be the last. His form is tilted towards me, anticpating the news he will hate to hear, yet still unready to take the blow of my harsh and unforgiving verdict.

"Now that I've done that, now that you've proved inconvenient to me, you're no longer demanded to be here."

Tears wander his face for places where happiness is still abundant, only to turn them to the dark side. "Ryan, are you..." His voice breaks off, but he struggles to continue; it's for me, and that's all that he needs. "Are you kicking me out? After all that we've done, after all that we've been through?"

After all that we've been through? Does ignoring me at a party _I_ was invited to count as a fruitful experience? What about stealing things from gas station markets, or even lighting a bush on fire in the back yard? What about that?

"Look, I'm sorry," I whisper. "I am very, very sorry, and I wish it could be different. I really do, but...it's just not right to have you here in my house."

After a moment of prolonged silence, Brendon finally relents. "Then I guess I'll pack my bag," he concludes.

I notice how drained he is when he stands up to collect his things, and it's sickening to witness. His limbs sag as if stuffed with lead. His head droops from guilt and an unwillingness to catch a glimpse at me ever again, for it would be too much for him to handle. His back is slouched with regret that comes from the deepest section of the heart. His entire demeanor reeks of emptiness and melancholy.

Brendon needs to be gone, though. He needs to stop endangering me and my mother. He needs to stop acting as though he owns the place, strutting around like one of those putrid medieval lords that I've always detested. He needs to stop caring.

So why does my chest ache with sorrow? Why is my head clouded with confusion? Why are my eyes blurry and indirect? It's not a lack of sleep; it's a lack of a stone-cold nature.

After ten minutes or so, the creaking sound of the door echoes in my ears, and Brendon shuffles towards me, his duffle bag held loosely in his hand without strength.

"I suppose you're going now," I murmur, my eyes still trained on my lap so that I won't have to meet his wavering gaze.

"Yeah, I suppose I am." He stares at me for a while before proceeding. Shifting his grip on his bag, Brendon makes his way to the door, his hand pausing once about an inch away from the handle. It seems to take him forever to muster the energy to simply twist it, to leave and to never come back, to forget all that we did together, to never have to speak my name ever again.

"Brendon..." I begin to jump out of my seat, but I quickly place myself back where I started just as swiftly.

He turns, an ember of optimism diffusing in his eyes. It's difficult to face, how his heart is swelling with anticipation and how I have nothing to give him. "Yeah?"

"I'm sorry, Brendon." And I mean it. Wholly. Forever. Infinitely. I am incredibly sorry for what I'm doing to him, and I am incredibly sorry for putting him through a week of agony, and I am incredibly sorry for not recognizing that I should have listened to someone other than myself for once.

"It's no problem, Ryan." His voice is flat and dead, especially when he speaks my name, which used to be a such a scanty word that he still loved to say with joy. Turning the knob to the door, finally reaching the point where he is able to do so, Brendon steals one last glance at me and steps into the night.

The thirty seconds that I wait there, unmoving, are drenched with an emotionless existence. Nothing feels right, yet nothing feels wrong. Things simply _are_ , occupying the world without adjectives to pin them down.

But I'm glad about that. There are too many adjectives that try to define me, try to cage me up like in a zoo. Worthless, burdensome, and even cute, which Brendon had called me when I saw him first, when he spoke to me with his sing-song voice.

Soon, I commence my delayed movement. First, I start with my legs and hips, turning them around to stare out of the window behind me. Then, I use my head and hunt for nature of all kinds outside, into the darkness of the fallen sun.

Brendon is by the white picket gate, his fingers brushing every part of its varied wooden texture. It's like he's trying to become familiar with it, as if he somehow didn't know that his life is going to end here.

Once I've been staring at him for around ten seconds, we make eye contact briefly. _Was it an accident, or did Brendon foresee that I'd be here_? I find myself wondering. It holds for a time that is in reality abbreviated but seems much lengthier. After a moment or two, Brendon slants away, ashamed.

Because he is trying to forget. Forget me, forget the others, and forget himself, most importantly. He is cognizant of the fact that I'm not going to want to see him again, not after the things he's done, so he doesn't even wish to see himself.

Brendon thinks he's a monster, but he's not — far from it. Does a monster show someone without a life a good time? Does a monster help someone through, even if they're the ones on the higher level? Does a monster genuinely hope for the best in a person? But then again....does a monster lie and steal and poison the minds of others with instability just to keep a secret?

Yet, part of this mess is my fault. I was the one who let Brendon into my home. I was the one who kept him here, even after my mother had asked me if I was comfortable with it. I was the one who eventually kicked him out, condemning him to spend the rest of his life in heartbreaking agony and solitude.

So, in a way, he's just trying to forgive me.

Brendon runs his fingers over the fence once more, freezing once they finish their journey. Taking a deep breath filled with tremulousness and a will to block out the already-forming memories of sickness, he turns his back to the door and sets his feet in motion to march down the street so that he can leave me be, as I requested without sensibility.

Sensibility. Where had it been a few minutes ago?

Fear blooms in my stomach as I sprint to the door, slamming into it in my hurried attempt to open the structure. Fumbling for the knob, I furiously swing it open and cross my fingers that I'll find Brendon still close nearby.

I whip my head around in every direction, hoping to find him still lingering in my yard to collect himself after being shoved outside, but there's nothing that I discover immediately. Only after a prolonged inspection into the distance, my heart shrinking from despondency, do I observe a tall form lurking by the side of the road, its back hunched from merely not treasuring life like it used to.

Butterflies pound against my chest, pleading and pleading to be set free so that they might soar into the cool night air, but I can't just yet. My stomach twisting and turning, I prepare myself to shout. "Brendon!" I call. "Brendon, you ignorant piece of dirt, come back here!" I see the figure shift, as if alligning himself with me so that he can return, so that he can fall into my arms once he finishes his bleak and troublesome voyage to my home.

The being draws closer and closer with each weary step, though he persists as if his whole future is waiting for him at the steps. Hobbling and endeavoring to keep his limbs strengthened, Brendon unhooks the gate ferociously, with timid hands punctuating his actions, not paying any mind to if he accidentally ripped the hinges off just to get to me — thankfully, he does not.

"Brendon," I whisper, shedding the frown on my visage for a shining smile.

He beams, winking like the charming guy that he everlastingly aspires to be. "You didn't think you could get rid of me that quickly, did you?"

The light of the porch-lamp casts a glorious aura around him, illuminating his mahogany eyes so that they are almost transparent, gleaming and unfitting with my own, but I couldn't care less about what the universe believes is ethical — it never trusted me with anything, so why should I succumb to its power?

With his last bit of durability and determination, Brendon climbs the steps and cups both of his hands around my quivering face, fitting his mouth to mine in one last act of loyalty.

He always wanted to do that, rambled on about it repeatedly. I perpetually refused, but now, nothing about that plan impinges upon me. Now, it's the best thing in the world to hold Brendon close to me as if dying isn't a threat, as if dying isn't real, as if dying isn't what Brendon will do next after he lets go of me.

I snake my arms around his neck so that I will never have to surrender him to the grave, even if that idea is ludicrous, even if that idea won't work, because I need a shield, and I need it now more than ever.

It feels like an eternity that we're in this pose, but it's still not long enough. Nothing fills the crushing appetite for Brendon to come back inside and to stay there without any complications, without the government shoving in and telling him that he has less than a week to survive. I just want to sit by the hearth with him, huddled in the same blanket; and even if the fire isn't ablaze, and even if we do not speak, it will be more rewarding than having him dead.

Life is rarely that gentle, but speculation is always that stimulating.

Then suddenly, something changes. Suddenly, the weight against me gradually becomes more and more, until I have to labor to keep Brendon upright. He is falling, so I am forced to break apart from him to witness closed eyes and shallow breathing — signs of his life fading away.

"Brendon!" I shake him madly, as if a dog in the possession of a chewtoy in its mouth, but nothing seems to bring him back to me. "Wake up!"

Anger circles around my head, turning every piece of rationality that I vowed to maintain to shreds and mud. Sentiment isn't successful for me in this moment, so I throw it away like the dreams that I had before meeting my friends that shied away and fell asleep.

And with that, death seals over soft lips that I had kissed only moments before. And the moon — it taunts me, because it has light, and I do not, and it has life when I am falling under the river and can't seem to rise to the surface.

I hold onto Brendon's wrist as he descends to the ground, checking to see if this isn't some joke, some revenge after throwing him onto the streets, but nothing suggests that plan. The lines that used to be so hyper, reaching the pinnacle of his skin, are now flat marks, dead and bleak like himself.

Reaching up to absorb some of my slipping tears, I press them to Brendon's arm, rubbing with the ferocity of a lion, because I cannot comprehend that those marks could mean anything other than permanent ink. Black resisdue is absent from my fingers afterward, and I finally accept what has happened in a great lack of triumph.

One part of my brain advises me to drop the coincidences down the drain, but another part, a more pragmatic part, knows that Brendon foresaw his death and wanted it to be in my clutch, but if I were crying, then he would rather toss himself onto the street and ignore the nagging feeling in his mind that orders him to reconsider his departure and gingerly wipe my tears inside of the house.

Brendon was just a _child_. Not even an adult yet. How is this fair? How is any of this fair to _anyone_? The government didn't even think that he was human, none of them; they saw him as just on the edge, just borderline, and they even addressed him that way.

I didn't ask for danger. I still would've taken Brendon even if he were merely a full mortal, no autopsy dividing us, someone without a special difference, once I broke past the barrier of sarcasm and satire — I've done it before, so what would be stopping me?

I realize, finally, that it might just be everything. I isolated myself away from humans but lept to answer the calls of the Borderlines. There's something off about them, but I don't know what. Maybe people who can't last forever just aren't suited for me; maybe, as much as I tell myself otherwise, I live and breathe peril, because I'm a bloodthirsty headcase who can't make up his mind. Only when I am faced with an opportunity to witness death again do I accept willingly.

Why can't it be that I'm normal? Why can't it be that I don't shake whenever presented with an onerous question? Why can't it be that everything is perfect — and whether that means Brendon is with me or not doesn't matter anyway, because I'll either feel joyous, or I'll feel nothing, for I will have never known that he subsisted, and truthfully, I'm fine with that; it spares a lot of pain down the dark and dreary road.

But, Ryan...It's time you learn the truth about the world, the truth about Brendon, instead of viewing it from a sugar-coated lense on your favorite binoculars.

He's not going to want to come back to see the notches on your spine, reminding him of the times that he carved his dreams across your arms with his sharpest knife, spread like soot from a raging fire.

He's not going to want to come back to the memories of when he whispered into your hands his deepest secrets and said that no one had to hear, when his face suddenly looked clear and devoid of regret.

He's not going to want to forgive you for making him care and you being scared of the damage of the repercussions, even if he did the same thing, because he was in it wholeheartedly, and you couldn't bear to stay for the aftermath, the reality where he wasn't alive, so you told him to leave and never return to your home, because he would be like a shadow if he did.

He's not going to want to remember you, even in the ways that he adored, like when you painted his name on the walls of your mind with shades of black, reminiscent of the sky that he loved to watch, or when you told him of the fox by the creek outside, majestic and pure as his soft doe eyes.

He's not going to want to watch as you fall away, withering and dying like the oldest tree with slithering branches on his family's estate that never existed, and when you become nothing, trapped behind a closed door with the lock shut tight.

He holds the key to your world, and when you become mature enough to behave with tenderness, only then will he turn the knob and release the flood of memoirs, sweet-sounding to your ears and unforgettable.

Only then are you finished with him.

Brendon wanted to let go of the visions of him crying himself empty, collapsing to the floor because he simply cannot be trusted to keep himself up. He doesn't need that in his life. He doesn't need _you_ in his life. And it's a rather useful idea to accept that.

He wasted his time doing reckless things, anyway.

But when all of this is over, when Brendon is only a bottle of ashes on top of the mantle, you won't care. You can't be bothered to remember what he did for you, if anything at all. You can't remember how he, in a state of apathy and drunkenness, still murmured your name across your cheek. You can't remember how he still wished to see the fox promenading around the area beside the water, even if it was just a simple orange animal with too much fur.

You can't remember any of it, because you're weak and uncouth, spineless and empty, barely a human being with any verity. You have no soul, no worth, no value to anyone anymore, because you failed; you messed up, and no one will forgive you, or even attend to you, because you couldn't do something as minor as keep Brendon alive and standing, and that's all people will notice about who you are. Not your character, but whom you couldn't sustain, and that's supposedly the same concept to them.

Your tears will dry; your hair will fall against your neck; your body will be cleansed from the shower water hammering on your back. Yet your purity cannot be merely washed away by some lowly tap water, nor pentinent suffering throughout the ages.

These scars last, and they hurt like nothing you've ever known, Ryan. Why won't you accept this? Why won't you grow up, take a gander at yourself in the mirror, and realize that you did this? Not the government, not your mother, and not even Brendon. _You_.

Your teachers always told you to take hold of your responsibilities, to face the consequences like the other children repeatedly did without complaint. But why is compliance so important if all that it brings is relentless guilt for the perpetrator? Because that's what's happening now, and you can already perceive that you won't be able to shake this feeling easily.

The feeling that Brendon is gone, that he'll never come back. The feeling that you could've done something, but you didn't. The feeling that you forced another energy drink into his hands even after he told you specifically that he couldn't take staying awake any longer.

He gave you an hour, and that hour still wasn't good enough for your selfish needs. You chased him consistently, told him to get back on the horse, but his legs were broken — they have _always_ been broken, ever since you first trained your smooth chocolate eyes on him and willed him to change into someone whom you could love, someone whom you could rest your problems upon.

Well guess what? Now your precious Brendon is dead and gone, and you can't fix anything like you thought you could. Not even close.

So if your bedroom reeks of air freshener to mask the smell of your dirt and sweat from not leaving the area for a few days, then that's not Brendon's problem, and you need to comprehend that your issues have never been carried on his shoulders so that they could be repaired — not once.

Don't whine like a child, because that is not what you are, and you haven't been in a very long time. You knew, or at least hoped, that you'd never relapse, never return to that period of ignorance, though impenetrable innocence. You didn't have any worries about the world, and you were quite contented with the friends you had, however limited. That isn't real anymore, and your wishes don't matter to anyone except yourself.

But here you are, shaking in your own home that you're tied to by nostalgia and remembrance, telling yourself that you didn't waste any of your time on Brendon so that the pain will be dulled and you can move on with your boring life. And you're just like the kid you always hated, and somehow, that's worse than planting your feet in your current situation, soaking in your indifference, but refusing to come out.

Guess who got stuck with the short straw: you. Guess who traded in their stable life for one teeming with adventure, just to have it topple right over and crush their limbs one by one: you. Guess who miscalculated everything and ruined it for everybody: you again.

It's always you. That's all everyone's life seems to be about, as well, just because it's crucial to you that it is. You and your bitterness, you and your delicate fingers that pry too often, you and your unfolding trust that regularly turns out to be misjudged in placement, for it bites you in the neck in the precise moment that it gets its chance. Your fault. You.

As if addressing myself is so much better. There's something about blame, though, that really turns a human wild, yet I cannot seem to resist.

I never can. Not when Brendon first introduced himself to me, a gleam in his eye and a pen in his teeth. Not when we first made our activity checklist on a meager scrap of paper from Mikey's pocket and sought to find something worthwhile in it. Not when we spent our last hours together in extreme anxiousness and apprehension, knowing that it would just be me in the end. And in a way, I would be okay with that, because it's just like dying over and over again, and even my journal can't compare with those motives.

And I suppose life isn't always clear, and I can manage that, but this time, it is. Life is made for dying and attempting to hold on in the few years that you have, bringing down walls and constructing them along the way once you've spotted a flaw. It's a road, filled with long, winding paths that go on for more time than others, and then there's those abrupt dead ends, where it all stops, where you're no longer safe, where death pursues you.

That's what happened to Brendon. Maybe he could've stayed awake, and maybe he couldn't have. Maybe it was a decision, and maybe it wasn't. For the others, I have decoded the meaning, the purpose, but with him, he's a weight with his enigmatic implications.

I assume Patrick dozed off because he was the kind one — though not generous enough to spare others the same pain that he endeavored to avoid by shutting his eyes and becoming phlegmatic. He used to worry so much about his friends, so seeing them being killed off one by one like lambs to slaughter would be too much for him to handle, so he chose the opposite route.

We lost Gerard because he could no longer bear to see us, because he didn't wish for us to observe him die. And I bet he's just sitting in the minivan that everyone hated — lifeless, with a note splattered with blood resting on the middle console, announcing that micro-sleep was bound to happen at some point, though it never affected the Borderlines before.

Mikey's death still remains controversial to me. He might've hoped Brendon and I could settle our disputes and spend our fleeting time together without other distractions. Though, on the other hand, he could've merely gotten sick of it all — staying awake, having to entertain us, simply being alive.

Yet I got the worst card out of them all. While they had the opportunity to evade the lachrymose process of lamentation, I, however, cannot. I must wait as their funeral proceeds, dressed in black like the sky under which they set sail. I must avoid drowning in my own puddle of tears that surrounds me, as if it's a barrier to keep me contained. I must live on without my closest friends, their only mention in depressing memories and lost talks at the dinner table with the remainder of the people I know — one person, the _only_ person that has stood by me, including myself; my mother.

Maybe I've been viewing this in the wrong perspective. They received the lucky part — possessing the capability to leave whenever they pleased. I'm now just stuck with the lengthy time period of a human life, though I guess that's what the government aspires to achieve, isn't it? Force more people like me into the same fate? It sure seems that way.

Because none of the Borderlines wanted to settle down here — not really — and only they received their wish. I am still trapped between worlds that circle around the threat of insanity, of believing that my friends will return or offer a different result than what really happened.

They're _gone_.

I got one hundred and twenty-three hours. And it still wasn't enough.

~~~~~

"I think that our experiment went well, don't you?"

"Flawlessly. I couldn't have asked for anything better than what we received."

"Shall we make preparations for the next batch?"

"Let's give it a while, but I'm sure in saying that there will definitely be more like them. This was prosperous. No need to stop the fun now."

"Great idea. I'll inform the staff."

~~~~~

"And how does that make you feel?" That same question is always present throughout every therapy session I have with Mrs. Orzechowski for my ruthless anxiety. Always. It echoes inside my head like the tunnels that I see every morning when I ride to the pool, but it's merciless nonetheless. I should be used to it by now, yet, for whatever reason, the feeling of restlessness is seemingly ubiquitous. The mundane response makes this woman appear to me as less of a human and more of a robot. I hate it, and I hate her.

"It makes me feel angry more than anything I've ever witnessed before." I tap my foot upon the ground over and over, hoping that each second will fly by as quickly as possible so that I can get out of here, forget about what we're speaking of, but nothing ever happens on the blank face of the clock, or at least not to me.

Ever since Brendon died, time has either been moving markedly sluggishly or as hastily as a cheetah, but for both ways, I feel lost, caught in the current. Nothing seems to help me with it, because no one understands, primarily this "psychologist", or whatever it is that she prefers to call herself.

"Why is that?" Mrs. Orzechowski's pursed lips look as though they're getting closer and closer to me, attempting to consume me in a wave of moisture and smeared red lipstick.

"Because my friends' lives were so much more than a test. They were cheated out of something good, something worthwhile, and forced into a death that wasn't even their own. The peacefulness part of it does not excuse the fact that they only had less than a week to inhabit this earth. That's not fair."

"How so?" All of her vocabulary is made up of pointless phrases meant to stimulate me, meant to engage me in a "meaningful" conversation, but all it does is make me uncomfortable and itching for someone better, someone like Brendon.

"Don't you see, lady?"

My phlegmatic therapist reels back for once in her lengthy life, but I continue without a wrinkle in my speech.

"I don't care that my name is in the newspaper, that my face is known internationally for being a savior or something. None of that matters now that my friends are gone. And this world..." I sigh, gazing out of the window, seeing the same sights that Brendon saw, or Patrick or Mikey or Gerard, the same animals, the same plants, the same blue sky, the same everything. "This world doesn't recognize that I'm not its hero. I'm not what it wants me to be. I'm just a simple kid from Maryland who was lured into a friendship that turned out to be healthy for me, for my mom, too. I didn't need this, I didn't want this, and I definitely didn't ask to be broadcasted on the television daily for it."

Mrs. Orzechowski is silent, but she doesn't take the time to write down notes — which she rarely ever does, by the way. She usually merely sits there, marinating in her own indifference.

"I just want to let go," I whisper. "Why won't they let me?"

"Because you're important to them, Mr. Ross," Mrs. Orzechowski assures with the gentleness of a bird's stroking wings. "Sure, you may not be the creator of world peace, but you're something, and I think people need a little something in their life." That's the most insight thing she's every said, but it finally doesn't matter to me. There are far more crucial things to be worrying about.

"But their 'something' should not be manifested from innocent deaths!" I shriek, stomping my foot on the ground like a petulant child, the one that I've always despised.

"I'm not sure that's what it is—"

"It is what it is, and you know it!" I restate, feeling like a whirlwind is circling around my head and blowing my rationality to bits. "He died in my arms. Do you understand what that feels like?"

Mrs. Orzechowski shakes her head solemnly.

"Let me tell you." I scowl before beginning. "It tasted like heaven at first, to have Brendon so close to me, to have him embrace me like he never did to anyone else. But his weight suddenly transferred to me, piled it on top of mine, and I struggled to keep him upright. His muscles were dying, because his body was dying. And that feels terrible, because I realize that he can't help it, and I realize that it's the natural order of life, at least for the Borderlines, but it makes me think that it was my fault for not doing something for him.

" _That_ is not a 'something' to be proud of. _That_ is not a 'something' that people get to wear around like badges, because if they understood what actually transpired, they would be hesitant to even hear my name. _That_ is not a 'something' that is wonderful. _That is_ , however, a 'something' that I have to live with _every single day_. Now tell me again how great it is to give the people hope, would you?"

"Now, Mr. Ross, if you would just understand—"

"I _do_ understand." For the first time since I began visiting Mrs. Orzechowski, I start to cry. Tears fall into my lap as I shy away, but nothing can stop the rapid flow of water sprouting from my eyes, clouded with listlessness. "In fact, I understand too much by now. I won't elaborate, but I'm sure you already know."

Mrs. Orzechowski is silent, casting herself into a pit of her own agony just to escape my deeper one, a trench packed with treachery and soul-crushing monsters that attack once they see fit, even when unprovoked — _especially_ when unprovoked.

"I come here every Monday for help with my anxiety," I start, sucking in a deep breath and letting it fly away into the air. "But I think this has transformed into something that's more relevant when described as a long-sustained argument. I'm not sure I need you much anymore, because the entire purpose has shifted, and that's not so helpful for me."

A frown creeps onto Mrs. Orzechowski's aging face, marked with creases, distraught at my decision to depart from her services. "I suppose that's justified, in theory," she confesses after a long pause of me contemplating the world outside of this dingy building, a whole plethora of sights awaiting observation.

Time falls at the most stagnant of rates as I break off from my terrible psychologist. I can only see things in one perspective. Me stepping right through the door and not tossing my eyes back at Mrs. Orzechowski's concerned countenance. Me regarding my mother right in the eyes and instructing her to take me back home, because I can't take being with the same useless therapist forever. Me shivering as my own family loops an arm around me, for that's what Brendon did daily, if only with the hints of his actions seeking refuge as cryptic messages in the trees. Me entering the car, slamming the door tightly against the frame, spending the rest of the ride in complete silence — without music, without speech, without the sporadic whispers of breathing hiding in our ears. Me trying to forget why I go to the psychologist and what made me break away after years of sucking it up and asking for assistance. Me trying to live.

"Are you okay, honey?" my mother inquires as we exit the car.

"I suppose." My voice is brittle and uncertain, like the cracking of branches after a pommeling rain storm. "Can I just...can I go to my room for the rest of the day?"

Her lips curve into a pinched formation, but she nevertheless relents. "Do what you need to do."

I bounce on each step with savage perseverance, throwing open the door to my room and allowing the knob to bounce against the wall. I don't understand what I expect to find — Brendon, Gerard, Mikey, Patrick. None of them are there, as I should know. The government stopped by, payed us a visit to console us, and dragged the bodies away to an unknown location. They won't be back again.

Digging through the desk drawers, I withdraw a blue pen whose ink is ever so abundant. As I peer closer, I notice tiny divots where teeth could've rested — _Brendon's_ teeth. My face sinks with the realization that this was his favorite, so one part lectures me about the consequences, informing me that I shouldn't use it to mark down my simplistic words, but the other part tells me to scribble all around until the ink runs dry, all for blissful nostalgia; so I listen.

I sift through unsurmountable stacks of paper piled on top of each other in the form of journals and notebooks, varying in size, shape, and color. Selecting the smallest one, the most unsuspecting one, framed with black and more black, I pull away the cap from the pen and expose the first blank page, white like the snow that my friends never got to witness.

I press my writing utensil to the sheet, but nothing flows out from the tip — not ideas, not pictures, not quotes, not anything; only the clear face that got to enjoy some lines along the way.

It feels like ages that I stay there, reclined in a chair, but my pen still poised over top of the paper. The clock ticks away over and over again, each movement signaling the future drawing nearer and nearer, just like how my story started.

And suddenly, something happens.

I recall the instance when Brendon fell against me, yet I maintained my grasp on his wrist as he could no longer do for me. But there was something special upon his flesh, something that all of the Borderlines had — a mark, an indication, _a notice that they were alive_ ; I suppose that's something that I need for myself, possibly more so than they did.

I set out to work, first drawing the basic structure of the heart monitor spikes. Like four tusks merged together and bound with string. Even after a few minutes of staring at my creation, it still doesn't look right, doesn't do the Borderlines justice, though the same thing can be said about anything that I do now that I am alone and without companionship.

I reinforce the lines, accentuating them with even darker evenings and misty mornings in the manifestation of color, until they serve the purpose of dazzling my eyes each time that I glance away and back again to ogle it as if with a fresh viewpoint that shifted in the few seconds that I was absent.

While the drawing never quite looks breathtaking, I must halt my process, but not because of the gripping feeling of hunger, nor the shrieking banshee of a dry throat. I must halt because each stroke is like being burned over and over again by excruciatingly painful pots in the form of memories, vivid and sentimental.

So I stay in my bedroom for the rest of the night, marveling at my work, even if it's not spectacular enough for my standards.

And now, it's a tattoo, that lifeline, a sign that I am living and breathing, and that I will be for years and years, and also a reminder that my friends did, in fact, appreciate me in an indescribable way.

I feel that it's my duty to reciprocate the affection.

~~~~~

All through the way, that notebook of endings is tucked away in my pocket to scavenge for its own darkness. Because I haven't forgotten about it, no. In fact, I think about it daily. I keep it there so that I will be tied with the Borderlines, who provided the book with most of the graphite waste and ink filling up the pages, who told the story of the final and most heart-shattering cause of destruction: themselves.

 

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Thank you so much for reading this, you wet leaf.
> 
> If you enjoyed, please leave a comment or something I really don't care I hate this fic so much bye
> 
> ~Dakota


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